Adavnces in genomic and proteomic technologies have made the availability of biospecimens and corresponding data critical to understanding the molecular basis of human diseases such as stroke. Accordingly, the goal of the Biospecimen Procurement Core is to collect, process, store, and distribute biospecimens from patients in the context of both this proposal's clinical trials and during the routine treatment of patients at this medicial center. The first aim of this core is to support the collection and processing of serum, plasma, CSF, and genomic DMA from patients (approximately 50 per year) enrolled in studies described in projects 1-3. Samples will be collected upon study entry and over multiple time points as permissable, to create a set of biospecimens that can be analyzed over time and correlated with clinical progression. When available and appropriate, the core will also provide support to collect tissue specimens from patients. The second aim of this core is to create a more expansive biospecimen resource consisting of single time-point serum, plasma, and genomic DMA from all stroke patients (-800 per year) seen at this institution. The third aim of this core is to create an inventory of available biospecimen resources and deidentified data that can be accessed by authorized intramural and extramural SPOTRIAS investigators, for the purposes of sharing this biospecimen resource to promote novel clinical correlative studies in stroke prevention and treatment. To accomplish these goals, this core will capitalize on the extensive infrastructure that has already been developed for biospecimen management at our institution. Patient recruitment and consenting will be coordinated with Patient Core B. Biospecimens and associated data management will be coordinated with Biostatistics Core D and de-identified using a well-established honest broker mechanism. Specimen processing, storage, and quality assurance will utilize standardized operating procedures that have been in place in our institutional tissue bank for the past seven years. Generation and bioinformatic management of genomic polymorphism (SNP) data (although not specifically proposed in any of the current projects) will also be supported by the institution's GeneChip facility. Finally, biospecimen data management and data publishing will take advantage of efforts at our institution to develop an enterpriseclass, web-accessible biospecimen database (caTISSUE Core).